What…
Becoming Better People is a platform for personal stories that draw an arc from past experience to collective future growth — from Me to We.
And in order to fuel words with more power, Becoming Better People features and supports a hand-picked nonprofit to complement each Me to We story. The idea is to actively build a better Us by supporting outstanding change makers, just as the stories on BecomingBetterPeople.us can catalyze our own change-making ability.
The goal is to help us point our shared compass toward a better future: one based on intention about where we want to go, rather than simply where we end up.
Why…
While there is a personal driving motivation behind Becoming Better People, there’s a single underlying belief: Humanity is meant to evolve, just as we’ve been doing since day one. If we’ve lost our way at certain points in history (for example, now!) we have a moral imperative to course-correct.
We are conditioned to let others tell our collective story, and given today’s technology and media, that story has become a fractured mirror of realities. But we have the power to take our story back and control the plotline. And as Becoming Better People evolves in this corner of the vast cyber-verse, I hope to weave together voices that stake a claim to our becoming better.
How…
There’s a hack out there that says “Believe it to become it.” If you act as though you already are some aspect of amazing, then others will see that in you, bringing it into reality. A similar trick is directing your thoughts toward what you want more of, so it will expand in your life. The theory goes that if you focus on what’s wrong, you get more of what’s wrong. So why not focus on what’s right, to get more of what’s good?
I believe this hack can work for the whole. It involves taking our personal “Me” stories, connecting them to our collective “We” story, and infusing them with hope and vision. As an inherently creative species, we have the imagination and the capacity to make it happen. And by harnessing our natural, creative powers, we can be an unstoppable force for humankind.
Baby steps and quantum leaps are the same thing seen with a different frame of mind. We simply need to start somewhere.
Who…
I’m Jacqueline Jannotta - a writer, mom, wife, child of the seventies, and a forever optimist who aims to pull focus on a better vision for the future of humanity.
I’ve never been able to sum myself up neatly, as my career path has been anything but conventional. With a fresh TV-Film degree from Northwestern, I worked in television for entertainment industry studios like Warner Bros and Walt Disney. I then went on to develop and write content for trailblazing internet firms, and later founded ScoopOnSchools.com: helping parents navigate and expand the educational possibilities for their children.
Born out of this spirit of educating, along with a determination to gain a broader perspective on the world, I continued to leave convention aside and organized a family year abroad. That year was transformative. It shaped my husband, myself, and our two daughters for the better. So much so it inspired me to write Let’s Leave the Country! A Guide to Your Family Year Abroad, which is the guidebook I wished I’d had when embarking on our adventure.
You’ll hear more about me as Becoming Better People unfolds. But for now I'd much rather focus on Us.